Professor Mark Watsford is a lecturer and researcher in Sports and Exercise Science in the Faculty of Health at the University of Technology Sydney.

Always sports obsessed in his youth, an elbow injury led to a fascination with sports performance and understanding injuries. This led to a career in the physiological and biomechanical assessment of athletes along with a passion for enhancing well-being in a range of populations.

Mark’s primary research focus is the examination of muscle properties as they relate to soft-tissue injuries and performance in athletes, however, he has published in the areas of biomechanics, exercise physiology and performance analysis.

His ongoing work with the conditioning department at the Sydney Swans Football Club started in 2004, performing research to optimise performance in Australian Football.

The long collaboration has produced 35 peer-reviewed research papers in the last 15 years focusing on physical performance, factors contributing to injury, performance analysis and coaching.

His worked has spanned the revolution of microtechnology and use of GPS in sport, and the much-expanded ability to measure athletic performance during match-play.

He has also worked with athletes from a variety of other sports including netball, rugby league, soccer, futsal and cricket.

As Deputy Head of School (Research) Mark oversees the research portfolio of the group, providing strategic guidance around funding distribution and being a prominent spokesperson for the School. He also supervises several doctoral students embedded in high performance sport environments who investigate issues including back injuries in fast bowlers in cricket, physical, technical and tactical analysis in Australian Football, and the biomechanics of rowing.

“Our base at Moore Park in the SCG precinct is second to none. It affords great links to undertake embedded research which is world class,” Mark said.

“We have many collaborations in all the major sporting codes that are active research links.”

Staff in the School are leading the way in industry-embedded, applied sports science research. The School has received three consecutive perfect scores of 5/5 from Excellence in Research Australia over the last decade, indicating an output that is well above world-standard.

Mark has published 85 peer-reviewed journal articles in the sports science discipline and regularly presents at conferences. He teaches and co-ordinates subjects in the areas of nutrition and clinical exercise physiology, also providing support to the area of applied biomechanics.